Research has shown that feedback in the form of knowledge of test results is highly beneficial for learning, with the maximum benefit accruing when the time delay between the production of the results and the feedback is minimal. Still, many examiners administer multiple-choice examinations with answer forms on which examinees typically darken one space (labeled A, B, C or D) in a row of spaces for each of a number of questions to indicate their preferred responses to the questions. This typical answer form is unable to inform the examinee whether or not a response was correct or incorrect at the time the response is made. At a later time, examinees' answer forms may be returned with indices noting the correct responses. However, unless examinees have perfect recall of the test questions, and the order in which they appeared on the examination, the typical answer forms do not provide examinees with knowledge of the particular questions they responded to correctly and those that they did not.
Learning results in a relatively permanent change in behavior or mental associations as a function of experience with feedback. Research has shown that delaying informative feedback about the correctness of one's responses for as little as 12 seconds in a problem-solving task may significantly reduce the ease of learning and also decrease overall retention. It is clear that an answer form that would provide immediate informative feedback for the correctness of an examinees' responses would facilitate learning and improve retention.
An optimal examination procedure would be one that would include an answer form that would assess what the examinee knows as well as immediately provide feedback about incorrect responses while teaching the correct ones. Such an answer form would be a more efficient use of time and a significant improvement over the current methodology. The immediate feedback answer form would teach new knowledge at the same time it assesses current knowledge. Currently used multiple-choice forms do not provide corrective feedback to the examinee at the time of responding. Therefore, an opportunity to teach the correct response to a problem is lost. In addition, if later questions on an examination relate to information from earlier questions, an examinee who incorrectly answers a question on the current answer forms, where there is no corrective feedback, is more likely to miss the later ones. That is, an examinee's responses on a typical multiple-choice answer form may misgauge his level of understanding and his ability to profit from timely instruction.
An advantage of current multiple-choice answer forms is their ability to be scored automatically by a scanning device that is sensitive to the darkened option in a row of options for each question, for example. The "correct" option is the space on the answer form (labeled A, B, C or D, etc.) that corresponds to a similarly labeled answer option on the test form. If an incorrect answer option is darkened on the answer form, or if more than one space in a given row of options is darkened, the scanning machine automatically records the examinee's response as incorrect for that particular question. The total number of correctly marked answer options is typically recorded by the scoring machine and printed on the test form. The ease of assessing test results of large numbers of examinees has made the use of scannable, multiple-choice answer forms extremely popular.
For the foregoing reasons, there is a need for a test-scoring method and apparatus that can be applied to multiple choice tests, that provides immediate feedback as to the correctness of each answer choice to the examinee, and that provides means for calculating and scoring partial credit based on the number of incorrect choices the examinee made before choosing the correct answer.